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"The Belfast Hornpipe", also known as "Clog des laboureurs", "Royal Belfast", "Millicent's
Hornpipe", "Millicen's Favourite", "Millicent’s Favourite", "Sweep's Hornpipe",
"Great Eastern Hornpipe" or "The Great Western Hornpipe" is an Irish, English and Scottish
hornpipe in D Major. The parts are played AABBC (Martin) or AABBCC (Allan, Kennedy, O'Neill).
The melody was printed under the generic title "Lancashire Clog" in Elias Howe's Musician's Omnibus Nos. 6 & 7 (Boston, 1880-1882) and soon after as "Millicent's Hornpipe" in a collection by Glasgow publisher James S. Kerr; but by the 1920's had acquired the title "Belfast Hornpipe" (among other titles) by which it was printed in Allan's Irish Fiddler. As "The Sweep's Hornpipe" it was button accordion player Joe Derrane's signature tune. Quebec fiddler Albert Allard recorded the hornpipe, note for note the same as "Belfast Hornpipe", in Montreal in 1938 as "Clog des laboureurs". The name Belfast means 'crossing place by a sandbank'. It was printed in Elias Howe's Musician’s Omnibus Nos. 6 & 7 (1880-1882), Kennedy's Fiddlers Tune Book, vol. 2 (1951)("The Lass on the Strand"), Martin's Ceol na Fidhle, vol. 2 (1988), McDermott's Allan's Irish Fiddler (1920's) and Krassen's O'Neill's Music of Ireland (1976). |